This report investigates opportunities to diversify and broaden support (financial and otherwise) for nongovernmental approaches to realizing human rights. Such analysis is essential in light of global trends, including the relative scarcity of human rights charitable funding from local sources and increasing governmental efforts to restrict the foreign flow of funds to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The author argues for applying the concept of “business models” to human rights NGOs in order to organize thinking on areas for potential innovation according to function rather than form. He uses a business model framework for exploring examples of innovative thinking according to the following categories: (1) revenue streams; (2) key partners and resources; (3) “customer” (i.e., beneficiary or stakeholder) relationships and channels; and (4) cost structure. The report highlights innovative strategies that NGOs and others can pursue and structures they can adopt to pursue them, with a view to enhancing their impact, sustainability, and resilience. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

Human rights are often compromised and relegated to a lower status than security or economic interests. Furthermore, a lack of collaboration and communication between U.S. government agencies, the private sector, and civil society prevents a more coherent and effective approach to human rights. This report examines concrete ways in which the U.S. government, particularly the military, private sector, and civil society, can work individually and in concert to reduce human rights violations committed by partner security forces. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

New technologies have changed the types of data that are routinely collected about citizens on a daily basis. For example, smart devices collect location and communication data, and fitness trackers and medical devices capture physiological and other data. As technology changes, new portable and connected devices have the potential to gather even more information. Such data have great potential utility in criminal justice proceedings, and they are already being used in case preparations, plea negotiations, and trials. But the broad expansion of technological capability also has the potential to stress approaches for ensuring that individuals’ constitutional rights are protected through legal processes. In an effort to consider those implications, we convened a panel of criminal justice practitioners, legal scholars, and individuals from the civil liberties community to identify research and other needs to prepare the U.S. legal system both for technologies we are seeing today and for technologies we are likely to see in the future. Through structured brainstorming, the panel explored a wide range of potential issues regarding these technologies, from evidentiary and procedural concerns to questions about the technologies’ accuracy and efficient use. Via a Delphi-based prioritization of the results, the panel crafted a research agenda — including best practice and training development, evaluation, and fundamental research efforts — to provide the criminal justice community with the knowledge and capabilities needed to address these important and complex technological questions going forward. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

A number of countries worldwide have laws that specifically discriminate against women’s participation in the workforce, including bans on particular occupations, restrictions on opening bank accounts or taking jobs without a male family member’s authority, and restrictions on travel. The report proposes the U.S. legislation or executive action that would encourage U.S. multinationals to mitigate the impact of local discriminatory legislation to the extent possible within the host country’s domestic laws by following a code of conduct regarding women’s employment, potentially limiting that obligation to the most discriminatory of countries. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

Although many observers have documented a global decline in democratic rights in recent years, people around the world nonetheless embrace fundamental democratic values, including free expression. The survey finds that majorities in nearly all 38 nations polled say it is at least somewhat important to live in a country with free speech, a free press and freedom on the internet. And across the 38 countries, global medians of 50% or more consider these freedoms very important. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

The “green men” who fanned out across Crimea in early 2014, establishing control over key infrastructure and clearing the way for once-marginal political actors to seize the reins of power, were the vanguard of a forced political change that has led to grave human rights abuses across the Crimean peninsula. [Note: contains copyrighted material].

Ukraine struggles to survive as an independent nation against external and internal forces – Russia, the powerful neighbor next door, and Russian sympathizers throughout eastern Ukraine. “Russian-backed aggression, relentless propaganda and meddling in Ukraine’s domestic politics have pushed many Ukrainians to adopt a deeply polarized worldview, in which constructive criticism, dissenting views, and even observable facts are rejected out of hand if they are seen as harmful to Ukraine,” argue the authors. The writers identify this as a new form of exceptionalism. If commitments to tolerance, human rights and freedom to dissent are undermined, Ukraine will differ little from Russia. And that would give the international community pause in coming to the struggling nation’s aid. [Note: contains copyrighted material].